Technology and Social Isolationism

Technology and Social Isolation Imagine being left in a new environment with strangers. You do not know anyone and to make new friends with strangers isn’t the easiest option since they seem to be a little incoherent or set in their ways. Perhaps your ability to make new friends is not very refined due to lack of practice or maybe the strangers just don’t want new friends. Believe it or not this happens more often than you would think. Isolation from friends and family is not something that is good for your health. One of the most common places for this sort of occurrence tends to be but not limited to convalescent homes. When a person is isolated in that way it has a horrible effect on the health and the life expectancy. That is an issue that should definitely be resolved because no one should ever have his or her life cut short due to being socially isolated. According to statistics people who were unmarried and whom did not participate much in social activities had a higher mortality rate at an earlier age than those who participated in social activities or were married. (Social Isolationism, 2013) This shows that keeping in touch with friends and family can play a vital role in being and staying happy and healthy, as people get older. Another eye opening case of just how much social isolationism can hurt people in the same article as mentioned before it shows a the predicator relationship between being socially isolated and smoking and it was about the same. (Social Isolationism 2013) What this means is that the mortality rate of smoking causes people to live less than those who are non-smokers, and in relevance to being socially isolated it showed the mortality rate about the same. Social isolation of people is a tremendous issue; aging is something that nobody can escape. It can happen to adolescents as well as adults and causes harmful effects to each individual. That being said their needs to be action taken to help mitigate the isolation, and technology is definitely something that can improve living conditions and interaction not only in the older age, but also in all ages of individuals.

The Problem Known as Social Isolationism First, social isolationism is not caused by the advancement in technology; quite the opposite actually, because of the advancement in technology social isolationism has become less of an issue than it used to be. It contributes to the continuous communication with family and friends that are far away and it also can cause longer life spans in adults. According to statistics it showed that people who were unmarried and infrequently participated in social activities had a higher mortality rate at an earlier age than those who had friends and did such activities. (Social Isolationism, 2013) This shows that keeping in touch with friends and family can play a vital role in being and staying happy and healthy, as people get older. Another eye opening case of just how much social isolationism can hurt people in the same article as mentioned before it shows a the predicator relationship between being socially isolated and smoking and it was about the same. (Social Isolationism 2013) What this means is that the mortality rate of smoking cause people to live less than those who are non-smokers, and in relevance to being socially isolated it showed the mortality rate about the same. Also, if looked into when elder people are taken to convalescent homes they tend to have a very short life span after arriving. Studies have shown that fifty-three percent died within six months of placement.

Furthermore, it is a very big concern when it comes to the adolescent community as well. Thirty-five to fifty percent of adolescents attempt suicide and of that ten to fifteen percent that suffer from severe depression complete a suicide. (Patel,2010) In adolescents, social life is a very important aspect, whether you’re doing well in school or fit in with the rest of the crowd. Especially in school when isolated from the rest of the social crowd bullying of those isolated individuals becomes prevalent. This is something that needs to be addressed since bullying is a risk factor for suicide and suicide attempts, research studies showed that loss of friends and social isolation is correlated to those sorts of attempts as well.
The Social Solution The best way to solve this rising issue of social isolation is to tackle it with technology. Technology is something that unites the world by allowing global communication. If the problem with the elderly is that they are isolated from society and family than why not implement technology to where they can interact with other people. Perhaps this isn’t the best solution currently but in the future to come this will be something that will definitely make a difference. The reason I say and believe this is because we are the technological era. The future population will be used to computers so having to teach them how to use it will actually be the minority rather than the majority. So to help the elderly with their social isolation allow them access to computers that solves one sort of communication issue. Also, for those who use computers often you end up forming a sort of community online that you befriend and create relationships with. For this I have personal experience because I have always been technologically savvy and have played games and communicated online. I have created friendships and relationships that I would have never been able to create. For example, I started playing a game called World of Warcraft. The game is considered a massive multiplayer online game and it has a subscriber base of about fifteen million. When I was playing I was able to make new friends and communicate with them on a daily basis and sometimes it would be more entertaining than actually going out and doing social activities with friends. Now I do not say that one should immerse themselves in only that kind of environment but it can definitely help fill social social aspects that would otherwise be inexistent. This sort of technology can keep the humans need for social interaction at bay and would help fulfill that sort of void in the older generation. Furthermore, coming up with a solution for the adolescent is actually quiet easy because it actually already exists. The advancement in technology has allowed for social interaction through a screen in a way where they can interact with each other. With this advancement it allows the creation of online social groups all sharing similar interests. This can help fill the issue with being isolated at schools and such because now they can interact with people who may be going through the same thing as them. This would work better than the self help groups that tend to not really do very much but help diagnose those individual with psychological issues. I know this from first hand experience because I know several people that have suffered from social isolation and going to those groups actually made things worse because all they did was just let them know they were suffering from depression and such. What should be done for both cases is implementation it is simple, you put computers in convalescent homes as well as coming up with mock social medias that can help them communicate with other people. For the youth social medias should be encouraged since it increases social interaction. Perhaps the implementation of other social medias that can compete with the rest of the correctly standing social medias will be the best implementation for helping the youth.
Benefits
The direct benefits of implementing this is that it is very cost effective and it will have the potential to lower suicide rates in the youth as well as improve the living conditions of the
Figure 1 The Decrease in Price since 1984 older people.
This figure from the previous page was taken from the Britannica shows the decrease of costs for computers and how they have improved performance wise and actually gone down in price making them affordable. http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/04/computers-just-keep-getting-cheaper-and-better-and-we-should-eagerly-await-the-days-ahead/ That link shows the cost of apple computers which till this day still tend to be the most expensive computers on the market if you go and see the prices when you’re looking at the personal computers that are made by third party developers the prices drop even more. In example the following graph shows the decrease in in overall computer has dropped well over twenty percent.
Figure 2 Decrease of Computers over time

This shows the overall drop of computer prices ranging back since 1998, this figure shows the decrease of about 20 percent for the total cost of purchasing . http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DLIvw6mZGBU/SeUf1jxYH1I/AAAAAAAAAZg/E9oMjR6vcWI/s1600-h/computerprices.jpg The decrease in the cost of computers makes this solution a very easy one to make especially because in the long run it will probably save the individuals a lot of money especially if this implementation is successful due to the fact that it may even reduce the costs of medicine and other medical costs, this is of course assuming that the solution has rendered positive results. Another benefit of doing this cost efficient solution is that for whatever reason it does not work than it was not a cost heavy project that can easily be switched out. As far as materials go all of the main necessary things would be monitors, towers, keyboards, mice, and speakers. The average cost of one of these if it were going to be used solely for social interaction via the Internet would probably cost about 200-300 USD. With the cost of technology the way it is now this idea would be viable and easy to do.
Conclusion
Due to the statistics shown about the relationship between smoking and social isolationism it is extremely important to keep in mind just how much it can affect you life in the long run. What is the point of being healthy and fit when there is a possibility that you body will suffer similar effects of a person who has been smoking all their life just because social aspects needed by humans were not met. The way times are moving today everything is being done electronically and if you begin to fall behind in that regard than you will fall behind socially as well. The best way to fix this is to take advantage of what technology has to offer, exploit it! Use it to the fullest, make friends that you can communicate on the daily with and have a good time. Technology opens doors and allows for multitudes of different social aspects that were not possible before, like chat rooms, voice over protocol, and webcams. Without technology these aspects would not exist and would be limited to just what would be able to be done socially. Reference:
1. DAVIS, H. (2008, February). RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE?. Strad. pp. 56-57.
2. DENIAL OF ISOLATION. (2000). Communications of the ACM, 43(12), 10.
3. GREYDANUS, D., PATEL, D., & PRATT, H. (2010). Suicide risk in adolescents with chronic illness: implications for primary care and specialty pediatric practice: a review Review. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 52(12), 1083-1087. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.2010.03771.x
4. Pantell, M., Rehkopf, D., Jutte, D., Syme, S., Balms, J., & Adler, N. (2013)
Social Isolation: A Predictor of Mortality Comparable to Traditinoal Clinical Factors. American Journal Of Public Health
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5. Watson, T. (2013, 03 26). The dangers of social isolation. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/03/social-isolation/